Our newest entry into the bonus issue category is GameChangers, and its purpose is to provide a special focus on the people and organizations shaping the future of the North Bay. It’s an idea we discussed for many years that finally came to fruition in 2013 when its inaugural edition debuted. The feedback we’ve received after every issue from both readers and advertisers has been overwhelmingly positive, and now this issue is locked into its role as an annual issue.
One advantage we had this year was the benefit of all the work we’ve done in previous years compiling lists of worthy candidates. We found that most of the list was still very viable and afforded the staff with a partially researched starting point for this year’s edition. As is the norm, eligible for consideration are businesses, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions and philanthropists. And true to the past, we realized there were significantly more candidates meriting inclusion than we had space for. And so the internal debate on who and what to cover was ignited anew.
In past years to aid our decision-making process, we reached out to North Bay leaders across geographic and business sectors to help us refine the list of candidates. Each of the individuals who responded suggested many candidates we already were considering, but importantly, others we hadn’t considered in our initial musings and where appropriate, we added those suggestions to our list of candidates.
This year, the nomination of new potential candidates was done exclusively internally. This process resulted in several new organizations, businesses and individuals added to the existing list to be evaluated. Now finally, we were ready for the hard part—culling the candidates and choosing who was to be included. We were aided by past commentary supplied by North Bay leaders, but it boiled down to lots of detailed discussion with the editors and some further research until we were confident we’d made the right choices for this year’s GameChangers issue.
The GameChangers stories this year are fairly evenly spread geographically throughout the North Bay with individual and overlapping focus on Napa, Marin and Sonoma counties. There were, once again, more than a dozen other companies, organizations and individuals worthy of inclusion in this issue, and they’ll be considered again next year. Putting this issue together confirmed what we already knew: The region is blessed to have so many extraordinary people living and working within its boundaries.
As you read, you’ll notice this issue differs significantly from our normal monthly publication. It contains none of our regular features or columns. You’ll also note the layout and design has been altered to better align with the special nature of this issue.
With all that said, that’s it for now. Hope you enjoy reading, as much as we enjoyed creating this special issue of NorthBay biz magazine.
